New York gives big wins to Trump and Clinton

Trump won the Republican primary with 60% of the vote, followed by Kasich at 25% and Cruz at 15%.    Trump got 93 delegates and Kasich 4.

Clinton won the Democratic primary with 58% to Sanders' 42%.   Delegates were split, with 159 for Clinton and 106 for Sanders.

What happens now?    Both of them are expected to win the next batch of states coming up next Tuesday.   But it's still a close call as to whether either front-runner will have enough delegates to win on the first ballot at their conventions.   Trump still will need to win about 60% of the remaining vote.   It's a little easier for Clinton, since she has only one opponent instead of two.

Trump's victory speech was a departure for him from his past rally behavior.   First, it was in the glitzy lobby of Trump Tower and the guests mostly seemed to be from the upper echelons of New York -- wealth, beauty, sophistication.   No angry crowds, no jostling.  Trump himself had toned down his rhetoric.   The main issue he mentioned was jobs.   Nothing about immigrants, deportations, deals.   He referred to his opponent as "Senator Cruz," not "Lying Ted."   Everyone assumes this is the doing of his new campaign manager, an experienced political operative rather than his tough-guy Lewandowski, who has been relegated, as one observer put it, to the role of "scheduler and body man."

But will it last?   Or will Trump be Trump again?   Reports from the campaign trail today say that he was back to calling Cruz "Lying Ted" again.   Ah well, it may take a few more rounds to learn to appear "presidential."

Bernie Sanders went into primary day predicting that he would win, but he wound up doing not quite as well as even the latest polls had indicated.    That seems pretty easy to explain.   New York primaries are open only to those registered with that party as of last October;  and that was before the Sanders phenomenon became a real movement.   So large numbers of these new young new voters, who have been energized by the Sanders' campaign, were probably not able to vote.   In fact, New York had the lowest turnout for a 2016 primary at 19.7%, second low only to Louisiana.  Sanders vows to keep going and work to try to get superdelegates to support him.

In Hillary Clinton's victory speech, she called for unity, saying to all those who supported her opponent that we have more that unites us than what divides us.    She increased her delegate lead over Sanders by another 53 delegates.   So that path for him to the nomination keeps getting narrower and steeper.

There was a serious challenge about voter disenfranchisement that the New York Attorney General has announced an investigation of.   It's said that 126,000 registered Democrats in Brooklyn had their party registration changed from Democrat to Independent or Non-Affiliated without their permission.    Brooklyn is Sander's home town and stronghold of support.  Apparently it was not widespread in other areas, so it wouldn't affect the overall election outcome, but it could change some district results and hence a few delegates. 

Election officials have said that they had a personnel shortage in bringing voting rolls up to date and that their last minute work to catch up only made it appear that an unusually large number were dropped from voting rolls at the last minute.   But that doesn't explain the numerous complaints from voters themselves who tried to vote and were told they were not registered in that party.  We'll see what comes of this.   Glad the AG is looking into it.

Ralph